"They have been in these five minutes, and gone upstairs to tidy themselves." "What girls?" faltered Kenelm, retreating towards the door. "I thought you said you had no nieces." "But I did not say I had no daughters. Why, you are not afraid of them, are you?" "Sir," replied Kenelm, with a polite and politic evasion of that question, "if your daughters are like their mother, you can't say that they are not dangerous." "Come," cried the farmer, looking very much pleased, while his dame smiled and blushed, "come, that's as nicely said as if you were canvassing the county. 'Tis not among haymakers that you learned manners, I guess; and perhaps I have been making too free with my betters." "What!" quoth the courteous Kenelm, "do you mean to imply that you were too free with your shillings? Apologize for that, if you like, but I don't think you'll get back the shillings. I have not seen so much of this life as you have, but, according to my experience, when a man once parts with his money, whether to his betters or his worsers, the chances are that he'll never see it again." At this aphorism the farmer laughed ready to kill himself, his wife chuckled, and even the maid-of-all-work grinned. Kenelm, preserving his unalterable gravity, said to himself,-- "Wit consists in the epigrammatic expression of a commonplace truth, and the dullest remark on the worth of money is almost as sure of successful appreciation as the dullest remark on the worthlessness of women. Certainly I am a wit without knowing it." Here the farmer touched him on the shoulder--touched it, did not slap it, as he would have done ten minutes before--and said,-- "We must not disturb the Missis or we shall get no supper. I'll just go and give a look into the cow-sheds. Do you know much about cows?" "Yes, cows produce cream and butter. The best cows are those which produce at the least cost the best cream and butter. But how the best cream and butter can be produced at a price which will place them free of expense on a poor man's breakfast-table is a question to be settled by a Reformed Parliament and a Liberal Administration. In the meanwhile let us not delay the supper." The farmer and his guest quitted the kitchen and entered the farmyard. "You are quite a stranger in these parts?" "Quite." "You don't even know my name?" "No, except that I heard your wife call you John." "My name is John Saunderson." "Ah! you come from the North, then? That's why you are so sensible and shrewd. Names that end in 'son' are chiefly borne by the descendants of the Danes, to whom King Alfred, Heaven bless him! peacefully assigned no less than sixteen English counties. And when a Dane was called somebody's son, it is a sign that he was the son of a somebody." "By gosh! I never heard that before." "If I thought you had I should not have said it." "Now I have told you my name, what is yours?"